Jonathan Haidt is described as a modern-day prophet who claims to have the cure for the epidemic of anxiety afflicting young kids today.

The disease, he argues in his book, The Anxious Generation. How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, 2024, is caused by smartphones and the decline in free play. Like the Pied Piper, he is garnering followers, including the influential Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, who has led the way and induced the federal government to ban social media for those under 16 – a policy set to be implemented by December. Haidt has followers globally who are now watching the experiment in Australia and how it will play out.

My advice to parents is, don’t raise your hopes too high or expect this is a solution for your concerns. At this point, the technology cannot guarantee age assurance. Whatever is installed to achieve this ban will have flaws, it will present a challenge smart kids will get around and be a cause of increased family angst. Most importantly, it will undermine the education of children for a world where we need to get much better at adapting and adopting new technology.

I’m reminded of an experience 20 years ago when it was family day at my grandson’s primary school. I sat with him and two other 11-year-old friends. One showed me his USB: I had not seen one before. They explained what it was for and then told me they had hacked into the school’s computer system to access the internet. I was suitably impressed and thought the teacher should know about this. I advised the teacher if they treated the boys nicely, they would tell them how they did it. Which they did happily to the gobsmacked principal.

By the time these kids we are concerned about are adults, there will be other technologies which will hook in the next generation in even more sophisticated ways. The average age of Silicon Valley employees, where the big tech companies are located, is mid-20s to mid-30s.

Apart from his passion for disrupting children’s media usage, the prophet’s fundamental proposition is questionable. His data is correlational, and media researchers, working in the field of communication studies, have come to a different conclusion. Smartphones and social media are a factor, but not by any means the driver for the unease some children are feeling today. Victoria Police agree with this; in their experience, social media is a contributor but not the driving force behind the upsurge in youth crime. (The Age, 15 June). I haven’t heard it argued that banning social media for Indigenous kids would relieve their anxiety, reduce abuse, violence and incarceration.

In the early 70s, my PhD was a study of children’s self-esteem and their attitudes to film and television programs including their perceptions of media violence. The best global studies could conclude at that time was:

For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For other children under the same conditions, or for the same children under other conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most television is neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial.

My research found other factors than media were at work, and much more influential in causing anxiety, excessive viewing, isolation and apathy at school. They were, particularly, family dysfunction, how a child is doing at school, their friendship groups or lack of them and peer influence.

Social scientists worldwide, today are telling Haidt their research confirms the same result we have found before, smartphones are not the single or most important causative factor in anxiety, bullying and increasing violence, sexual abuse and even suicide. And, for many kids, in many situations, smartphones can be a benefit.

Haidt argues, “This time it is different.” His evidence is based on statistics which show anxiety among young children rose, coinciding with the introduction of the smartphone in 2012, and then steadily ballooned.

Candace Hodges, a psychology professor at the University of California, reviewed 40 research studies and found no causal effect relationship between smartphone ownership, social media and adolescents’ mental health. She points to such things as the epidemic of gun violence in schools, drilling for safety measures in preparation for a killer coming into your school, drugs, opioids, sexual abuse, intergenerational economic inequality and social isolation which leaves kids feeling lost and alone.

Haidt’s response is, these are “blender studies”; the spike in anxiety among kids is a global phenomenon and the smartphone is the single universal change at that time. The medium is the message. Haidt does not account for all the kids who are living their lives, enjoying their friends and families while using social media and playing video games and skilling-up so they will adapt and merge into this new technological age. If, let’s say, 50% are anxious, 50% are not; accepting all adolescents must deal with physical and emotional change on their path to adulthood.

Recently, Haidt was interviewed on the UK podcast The Rest is Politics led by two articulate political commentators Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell. Stewart was obviously moved by the encounter. He seemed to be having an epiphany, taking notes, but Campbell was much more cautious about the rhetoric from Haidt as he pursued his case. Campbell asked, “Let’s try to put all this together. Where are we heading?”

Haidt replied: “I don’t want to even talk about it. That’s the subject of my next book which will be called Life After Babel. Adapting to a world we may never share again."

Campbell admired the way Haidt got in a plug for his book, then Haidt went on, “I’m actually very optimistic because… forget Congress … here are four things we can do for ourselves. No smartphones before 14. No social media until 16. Phone free schools. More free play, responsibility and independence. We have to get back to the point where tech is a servant, not a master."

Then he said: “Here’s the problem. The people who are really driving it and are going to live this way are primarily the educated, married families where you have two parents, you’ve got some resources, you can hire a babysitter and do other things than just give them a phone … this will not happen with the blacks and Hispanics, the single mums… We’re going to see a huge social class divergence, an analogue childhood for kids of wealthy educated parents … like junk food and obesity."

So, there we have the prophet’s predictions. This is the answer from the man who is stirring up the politicians to ban smartphones and social media for the under 16s.

I do wonder just how many kids will be outside playing without their technology because some magical transformation of accepted norms — which arrives with no governmental intervention (in Haidt’s world) — brings an analogue world only the privileged will live in.

Haidt is right in saying we need to master the technology, but there is no evidence to support a ban on smartphones or social media – just intervention on a wing and a prayer. Education is the only response to be made. Just as children must learn to cross the road, not to talk to strangers and learn to be civil, they need to understand technology from age two to three. Teaching how to use and participate in the media world should be a core part of education from pre-school on.

Children must learn how to use and not to abuse technology’s capabilities. Governments must intervene, to ensure this curriculum is established. Teachers must be trained. Currently, they are afraid as they know how smart the kids are. And those massive tech corporations must be called to account, broken up and regulated. They are way too big for anyone’s well-being – individuals or government or their own.

This education enterprise should be a partnership between the schools, business, the tech companies and government. It’s a formidable task, but the only way forward.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.